Overview of the game:

Your science experiment has gone wrong. Thankfully, it’s not life threatening. It has just turned your vitamins into huge green, rolling projectiles and your clipboards are now suspended and twirling like they’re in space. AND, the lab door has disappeared. Or rather, it’s been transformed.

Cleaning the lab = you scape the lab. Gain points when you make the clipboards disappear. Literally throw away the vitamins and you may find the key to a set of doors that can get you out.

The development process:

I brainstormed an escape room concept and was most interested in doing a lab theme. I created a first level where the player is stuck in a windowless and doorless lab. Originally, I wanted players to grab the piles of notebooks and find the key to get out. I put colliders and tried to make my objects something you can grab but it was hard to get my XR rig to function properly.

In this basic version of the game, you can make the floating clipboards disappear and when you get the key you can find the cabinet doors (which are the same color as the key) and get outside to a park for some fresh air and a break from cleaning.

Successes:

I think the assets are the most successful. I was able design the escape lab with great furniture to make it really look like a sterile setting with a bit of a fantastically element. The music gives an interesting feel that makes you want to keep playing. Additionally, the non-traditional door teleports you to level 2 and ultimately outside, into a peaceful park--which part that I liked most.

Challenges:

Everything! Getting my original XR rig to work and making my items interactive was incredibly challenging. Just because you make and set up a feature, it doesn’t mean it will work as you imagined it would. It takes a lot of troubleshooting and time at my current skill level.

Now, the first person experience of the game shows how I wanted to player to find the hidden key and escape to a second scene that would teleport them outside.

What you learned:

Executing a game idea can be more difficult than expected. Many times I felt defeated by this project and realized switching to XR was a big shift for me to try and do on my own. It was hard to grapple with making an escape room when my skills are still at a basic level. This project taught me how much time, skill, and problem solving it takes to really work in XR.

Ultimately, I had to scale this project down so that it could be interactive in some capacity.

Possible future revisions:

Although I like that a player can’t escape the room without the key, I’d love to raise the stakes and make it so that you can clean the lab more, like organizing the notebook piles. Additionally, I’d like to expand the park which is the level you escape to. I enjoyed making the benches and trees and it would be interesting to develop the environment further.

MUSIC CREDIT:
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/jeremy-mayfield/back-when

License code: NCNNOS0D9GUBHKJM

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